Avenues Abroad
by Casix Thistlebane
Summary: Willow is off across the pond, in search of even more slayers for the Helsing Institute. What old world horrors will she encounter there? Grecian gods? German goblins? Luke-warm beverages?


Disclaimer: Willow Rosenberg, her friends, and the concept of vampires slayers, and hey, pretty much the whole universe of this story belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Fox. I'm still not making any money, on this, or anything else really. Someone, please find me a job! ;D  
  
Author's note: This is the sister story to "Roads Less Traveled" which stars Xander and Dawn as they travel across the US in search of more slayers for the Helsing Institute, the new slayer headquarters in Cleveland. Trouble is, though there are plenty of slayers and mythological creatures for them to find stateside, there's even more across the pond. So Willow, in the process of completing her "not-being evil training", is off to Europe and beyond, to seek out new life and new civilizations and – wait, no, wrong fandom. You get the point though.  
  
Summary: Willow is off across the pond, in search of even more slayers for the Helsing Institute. What old world horrors will she encounter there? Grecian gods? German goblins? Luke-warm beverages?  
  
Avenues Abroad  
  
by Casix Thistlebane  
  
Prelude  
  
Willow walked toward the baggage claim in Heathrow airport, her nerves jingling and her heart singing. For all of her speeches about "needing to grow up", and for all of her worry that she still needed to finish "not-being-evil", she was really looking forward to this trip. It was her first real chance to be a normal girl in more than seven years, and to see all sorts of new places and people while she was at it. She just wished that she could have at least brought her girlfriend along.  
  
Make that EX-girlfriend. Kennedy's words and attitude toward her before she left still squeezed her heart. The younger girl hadn't been able to understand that this was something Willow felt she really, truly HAD to do, and had to do alone. She understood, sort of, that Kennedy felt slighted, and that she didn't want to try to hold up a long distance relationship for a year, but she wished she could have given it a chance. Tara would have, she thought. Though Oz never did.   
  
Thinking about her former lovers put Willow in a bad mood, and since she was already tired, and sore, from the long flight over the Atlantic without being able to sleep, she cast the thoughts aside. This was a happy time. This was an adventure. It was not time to go over bad thoughts from the past.  
  
Actually, she acknowledged, she was in the perfect position to go over those bad experiences, deal with them, and move on. But she was just too tired to do it, dammit. She grabbed her suitcase and changed her watch to match the clock on the wall, and headed through customs.  
  
Her plane had, miraculously, landed an hour early. Which meant that the representative of the Devon coven was not yet here to pick her up. Willow looked around the small post-customs waiting area. There were a few shops and rental kiosks, and a sign directing her to the Underground, which she didn't need. Instead, she spotted a small coffee stand, and smiled. If she was going to adjust to the time difference, she'd need her caffeine. She ordered a small coffee, counted out a few of the pound coins she'd saved from her last trip, changed over another hundred dollars (grumbling over the appalling exchange rate), and stepped outside into the rainy March evening to wait for her ride.  
  
Half an hour later, her sinuses gave up the battle against altitude change, black coffee (she was too used to Starbucks, she supposed, hadn't even thought of doctoring it), and ambient cigarette smoke from a few of the other travelers, as well as the chilly air, and gave her a nose bleed.  
  
She tossed out her empty coffee cup and pulled out a handful of tissues. She could stop it instantly, clear up her sinuses, and pep up her immune system to boot with a simple spell, but this was the start of her year without magic, and she'd be damned if she'd screw it up now, only a few hours in.  
  
It wasn't a bad nosebleed, after all. It stopped in only a few minutes, and she was just cleaning up the last of the blood using a wipe and her make-up mirror when an odd looking, sort of half-car pulled up to the curb and a stocky young woman jumped out.   
  
The car was one of the most amazing things Willow had ever seen. It was yellow, first off, a bright, banana color, with lime trimming. The trunk also seemed non-existent, as the car stopped several feet before it should have toward the back. It was slightly narrower than most cars as well. Willow wondered if her luggage would even fit in it.   
  
The stocky girl gave the tiny hood of the vehicle a loving pat, and glanced around the small group gathered in the gray, post-dawn light. She was a little taller than Willow, with long, curly brown hair tied half-heartedly back into a loose bun. Several tendrils escaped, either falling along her face and neck, or sticking up in a frizzy halo. She had a very pronounced jaw, and thinnish lips, at least, until she seemed to consciously pout out the lower one, and a pair of red rimmed, cats-eye glasses perching on her nose. She looked about Willow's own age, though her complexion was still marred with the occasional zit, and though she was not what ANYONE would have called a classic beauty, she had an aura of confidence and joviality that Willow found bizarrely attractive.  
  
She also had shoulders to rival Xander's and a well padded midsection, beneath her loose button down work shirt and leather jacket. Her breasts, D's at least, if not larger, strained at her shirt, and as Willow watched, the girl heaved a sigh, and unbuttoned it far enough to reveal a tight black tank top beneath. The neo-punk ensemble was completed with combat boots, and a dark blue, spiked collar. She reached into one cargo pocket, and pulled out a battered cardboard sign, with Willow's name scrawled on it in cheerful block letters.  
  
Willow blinked. This girl was from the Devon coven? Since when? Willow was pretty sure she'd met the whole group when she was there last time. Perhaps she was someone's daughter, recruited to rescue the poor American girl from the horrors of the airport. Willow shrugged, lugged her backpack back onto her shoulder, and approached.  
  
"Willow Rosenberg?" The girl looked her up and down appraisingly. "Hey! I'm Gabrielle Stevens. I'm your escort."  
  
Willow blinked again. "You're American."  
  
"So are you." Gabrielle laughed. "Come on, let's get to the hostel, and take advantage of our wheels before I have to bring them back to Uncle Gavin."  
  
Willow shrugged, and handed off her bulky backpack to the obviously stronger girl. She slung it easily into the tiny vehicle and opened the passenger door for her before rounding the car to climb in herself.  
  
"I guess I'm a bit of a surprise for you, huh?"  
  
"Um, yeah. A bit."  
  
Gabrielle laughed again, a throaty sound that spoke of too many cigarettes. "Well, you know Uncle Gavin, at least. He's part of the coven, though he's living here in London these days. You met him once or twice a few years ago?"  
  
"Uncle Gavin?" Oh, Gavin Hopkins. The rail of a man with the gray hair who stuttered a lot when he talked to her. "Right. Gavin. Um, he's . . . interesting."  
  
"Yeah he is. I've been living with him for about a year now, while I did an internship with the American Embassy. Sweetheart of a guy, but he really needs to get a back bone. When I finished the internship, he pulled the strings to get me to stay on for a bit, so I could accompany you on your Euro-trip. Should be a blast, if you ask me."  
  
"Yeah." Willow was so completely out of her depth by that point that she couldn't see the ladder or the lifeguard stand. "You're my travel buddy?"  
  
"You were expecting one of the Devon witches?" Gabrielle swerved into the London traffic. "Of course you were. To help you keep your cool, I guess. But nope, I was nominated to join you. They figured you'd be more comfortable with someone who was more your age, and your nationality to boot. Also, I'm in the unique position to be exactly the sort of person to help keep you from performing magic."  
  
"How so?"  
  
"I'm allergic." Gabrielle swerved again, bringing the car to a neat stop in a parking space that would have been much too small for any other vehicle. "A spell is cast around me, and I break into hives. Also, the spell itself doesn't work right. I'm under strict orders to get the hell out of the way if you have a life or death situation that requires the stuff. So no hocus pocos, alright? Those hives take almost a week to go away, and they itch."  
  
"Got it." Willow smiled. Well, that was certainly one way to keep her as "normal" as possible. Gabrielle also reminded her somewhat of Jesse, with her straight-forward and continually cheerful demeanor. It would just take some getting used to. "Um, you said a hostel? We're not going to Devon?"  
  
"Nah, we're getting started right off the bat. We've got a week in London to get you settled, let you get a chance to be all touristy, and then we're off to Edinburgh to catch the first slayer. Uncle Gavin promises that the slayers won't give me hives, but we'll see, I guess. Vampires and ghosties don't, so I have high hopes. Oh," Gabrielle stepped out of the car and unloaded Willow's suitcase. "You wanna say hi, don't you? Or ask questions? We can take a day trip up, I bet. Though I gotta get the smart car back to Uncle Gavin by tonight. He has to drive to Cornwall tomorrow morning."  
  
"If we can?" Willow shrugged, then frowned. "Smart car?"  
  
"That's what this thing is called." Gabrielle patted the vehicle again. "Since it's all little like, and can fit in places where other cars don't go. I TOLD him he should have gotten a mini, but what do I know? I'm just a damned colonial."  
  
Willow smiled. "Cool. Smart car. What's on the schedule for today?"  
  
"Whatever you like." Gabrielle gestured to the building in front of them. "We're only a few blocks from the British Museum," She pointed over her shoulder. "And Soho's thataway," toward the street they had just driven down. "And its Sunday, so we can hit Camden and have some fun. Whatdaya say? If we go for Camden, I suggest we tube it."  
  
"Camden sounds like fun." Willow nodded. A week in London? Then on to Edinburgh? Well, she knew this was going to be an adventure. With Gabrielle around, it seemed like it would be a fun one. She just hoped she didn't screw it up.  
  
tbc in "Greyfriar's Bobby"  
  
postscript: Okay, so I'm gonna skip the week in London. Let's just say, she and Gabby get to know each other a bit better, and nothing really interesting at all happens. Honestly? I have no frickin' clue where this one is going yet, all I know so far is it's going to be a bit wild. 


End file.
